A Practical Wedding: Blog Ideas for the Modern Wedding, Plus Marriage » Weddingshttp://apracticalwedding.com
Weddings. Minus the insanity, plus the marriage.Tue, 03 Mar 2015 23:52:59 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1Pink Entreprenurship, and Why I’m Happy to Work in a “Pink” Industryhttp://apracticalwedding.com/2015/02/pink-entreprenurship-im-happy-work-pink-industry/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2015/02/pink-entreprenurship-im-happy-work-pink-industry/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 12:30:14 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=123170819At the end of the trip home from Alt Summit in January, I was sitting in Oakland’s baggage claim, completely exhausted. I’d just spent a whirlwind three days at a nearly mile-high altitude, running meetings, networking, pitching business deals, teaching, and of course learning. I’d done it all pregnant in heels, and had rewarded myself on the way home with an inflight panic attack that required me to be put on oxygen by the lovely in flight crew. (No surprise there. Wear yourself into the ground, and that’s what you get.) The gentleman next to me at the airport had […]

At the end of the trip home from Alt Summit in January, I was sitting in Oakland’s baggage claim, completely exhausted. I’d just spent a whirlwind three days at a nearly mile-high altitude, running meetings, networking, pitching business deals, teaching, and of course learning. I’d done it all pregnant in heels, and had rewarded myself on the way home with an inflight panic attack that required me to be put on oxygen by the lovely in flight crew. (No surprise there. Wear yourself into the ground, and that’s what you get.)

The gentleman next to me at the airport had clearly also come in from Salt Lake, and he asked me if I’d been there for the huge conference that takes place at the same time as Alt every January, The Outdoor Retailers show. I explained that no, I’d been at a conference for women entrepreneurs, because that’s the best terminology I have at the moment to sum up what happens at Alt.

As an entrepreneur himself, the man started peppering me with questions about the conference, and how it being by and for women changed things. I tried to offer a quick sum up of what had stood out to me over the course of the week. The fact that you’d catch women taking business meetings while nursing a newborn. That dads and other partners routinely showed up as the support team, taking care of one or more tiny children so a mom of toddlers (or six kids) could be on her A-game. Or that a tiny baby was fussing behind me at lunch while two big time female CEO’s were interviewed, and all that garnered was some smiles.

As I tried to sum this up in a succinct sentence or two, you could see the wheels in his head turning, trying to understand what I was saying. Finally he said, “But, I don’t understand. Why would you bring a baby to a conference? Conference tickets are expensive.” And I blinked, realizing the depth of male privilege in the working world.

Why would you bring a baby to a conference? Well, the year I brought mine, it was because he was six weeks old, I had just given birth and was nursing, and he couldn’t be separated from me for more than a few hours. If I hadn’t been able to bring him to the conference without question, I wouldn’t have been able to attend. But there are plenty of other reasons. Because you don’t have a sitter. Or because you support your whole family, so your partner is more than happy to come help you out you while you do your thing. Or because that’s why you went into business for yourself in the first place.

And it’s not that Alt Summit is a conference all about women with kids. I spent years attending Alt before I had kids, and there are tons of women in those halls who don’t have kids yet, and plenty who never plan to. In fact, one of the great things about that conference is that they’re all part of the same big crowd. There are conferences that are focused on women’s identity as “moms,” and those conferences are not my scene. I’m there as a business person, not as a mom, thank you.

But I also happen to be a businessWOMAN, with a small child, and complicated female biology that doesn’t always make things straightforward. Getting spend a few days in a place where women walk around doing their jobs nine months pregnant and three centimeters dilated (Because that is an actual conversation I’ve had. “How are you?” “Dilated!”) means that for that tiny window of time, I know that nobody going to try to hold me back no matter what life choices I make. If I want to slow down, because of kids, or my life goals, or just because I feel like it, that’s accepted and encouraged. But If I want to do a huge business deal through mild contractions… well… what exactly is wrong with that?

In The (Pink) Ghetto

All of which brings me to the idea of Pink Entrepreneurship, the term I use to describe being a woman who runs a business in a women’s space. (This phenomenon has otherwise been described as the “Pink Ghetto” and “Pink Collar” work.) As someone who works in weddings—an industry that could not get any pinker if you dumped a bucket of pink glitter on it, which I could get behind—I live with constant shaming when I tell people what I do. I’m a reasonably young woman, so when I tell someone that I run a wedding business, there are two assumptions that are commonly made. One, that I couldn’t get over my wedding. And two, that I must have a hobby business that my husband supports.

If I were a guy, running a business in the same space, everyone would assume I was a crazy smart businessman. Why? Because weddings are big business. Market-research firm IBISWorld estimates the US wedding market as being a $51 billion industry employing 800,000 people. A growth industry in this post DOMA world, at that. (Though the issue of thinking of gay weddings in terms of dollar signs is… too big to get into here.) And men who run growing businesses in lucrative industries are generally considered to be smart business people. But the average assumption about me seems to be that I probably play with ribbon all day, with a veil on my head, while my husband goes to his real job and earns a paycheck.

The problem is that we just can’t shake the idea that things that women are interested in are just not worthwhile. Or as Venturebeat’s Jolie O’Dell memorably put it on Twitter,”Women: stop making start-ups about fashion, shopping, and babies. At least for the next few years. You’re embarrassing me.” There is this idea that “lady things,” you know, raising kids, planning weddings, getting dressed, or shopping for food, are not worth taking seriously. Though less serious areas in the “men’s space” are somehow worthy. (Because you know, beer, powerful trucks, and golf deserve your respect. Or at least your business investment dollars.)

It’s a Pink, Pink World

Increasingly, however, a male-dominated entrepreneurship space makes no sense. Forbes reports that, “Women represent the largest market opportunity in the world. Globally, they control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending (U.S. dollars). In the next five years, it is expected that this number will rise to $28 trillion. How much is that? It is more than the markets of China and India combined—the largest growth markets in the world.” More specifically, eighty-five percent of purchases and purchase influences in the US are made by women, and fifty percent of products typically marketed to men are bought by women. But ninety-one percent of women say marketers don’t understand them, because of course they don’t.

Women are still marketed to like we’re a bunch of stereotypes, and not particularly smart ones that that. Plus, we’re condescended to. The number of emails I get about “What every Bride wants…” (like the marketer on the other end of the email has a better sense of that than me, the marriageable-aged woman) is staggering. And what marketers think “Every bride wants” is appallingly bad. (A crown that looks like you could get it at the Disney Store, but for $700?)

So while entrepreneurs should obviously go after markets they really understand, women are urged to stay away from silly things like baby moccasins, or Spanx, or wedding publishing. Even if they know exactly how to build a better mousetrap. Because if only women want your mousetrap, your mousetrap is a frivolous waste of time.

Even when women start successful businesses, they’re not taken seriously. Candy Brush, a professor at Babson College and a coauthor of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2012 Women Entrepreneurship Report was quoted by Forbes as saying that there are still mistaken perceptions “that women only start hobby-based businesses that are unscaleable.” (Which could bring us to a whole different discussion of if all business people even want, or should want, their businesses to be scaleable.) Or as Jamie Ladge, assistant professor of management at Northeastern’s College of Business Administration put it, pink collar businesses are viewed by VC’s (and I’d argue, the random guy on I chat with on the playground) as “business light. The stigma is that they’re fun and easy and maybe begun because she’s bored. In other words, not profit-driven.”

Or to paraphrase my friend Susan, “I love when people underestimate me. Then I can eat them for lunch.”

The Gap In The Market

Smart businesses are made by capitalizing on gaps in the market. Gaps in markets that you really understand. Gaps in markets that allow your particular skills and knowledge base to shine. And I’d argue that the facts currently point to the hugest gap in the market that the world has ever seen—marketing things to the huge and growing purchasing power of women consumers that… they don’t hate. In a way that isn’t condescending. Done, perhaps, by other women, who have a pretty good idea of “what every bride wants…” (That was a trick statement of course, since the answer is NOTHING. “Every bride” is not a market, and “every bride” doesn’t want the same damn thing.)

APW’s Year of #PinkEntreprenurship With Squarespace (and that $5,000 Scholarship)

All of that brings me to the project that we’re so proud to be collaborating with Squarespace on this year. For 2015, we’ll be focusing on Pink Entrepreneurship. We’ll be talking about, and to, women who run businesses in markets traditionally considered to be “women’s spaces.” We’ll also be giving away a $5,000 scholarship to a small business looking to take it to the next level this year. (Finalists to be announced February 27th!)

My personal goals for this project are two-fold: to bring more awareness to the fantastic, and really, really smart women running businesses in the “Pink Ghetto.” And to inspire more women (yeah, I’m talking to you) to start the businesses you’ve been dreaming about for years, or take the business you have to the next level. Businesses that capitalize on that way better (obviously silly, and frivolous, because ladies will buy it) mousetrap.

Because I’m tired of all the hot new businesses, as one New Yorker article memorably put it, being geared to solving the problems of guys who are “twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that’s who thinks them up.” While they may be who the world is paying attention to, the truth is, they’re not the ones making the majority of the world’s buying decisions. Or wearing the Spanx. Or getting the damn groceries.

Nope, that’s women.

Squarespace offers tools (and a special APW-only discount) to build your business website without a ton of capital investment, or even a knowledge of coding. (Which plenty of women have got, but I do not.) They offer sleek, minimal designs that you can customize to your business’ needs (but that are professionally designed, so you don’t actually have to do much customization).

This post was sponsored by Squarespace. The Squarespace mission is to provide creative tools that give a voice to your ideas, so you can skip the hair-pulling part of building a business (aka making a website) and get right down to actually doing business (aka making that money). You can find out how the new Squarespace 7 makes building your business website even easier by clicking right here. In conjunction with our Pink Entrepreneurship partnership, Squarespace is offering APWers a 10% discount on yearly subscriptions when you use the code APW15 at checkout. Click here to start your 14-day free trial.

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2015/02/pink-entreprenurship-im-happy-work-pink-industry/feed/144Letter From The Editor: Beginnings (and a New APW Book!)http://apracticalwedding.com/2015/01/new-apw-book/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2015/01/new-apw-book/#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 12:30:17 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=123167329Hi APW, While every January we reapproach the idea of beginnings (beginning the New Year, beginning wedding planning), Januaries aren’t really about true, from scratch beginnings. What I find inspiring about New Year’s (my most favorite of holidays) is that it’s all about starting again, right where you are. It’s about allowing yourself a clearing, a pause, a sense of space, so you can evaluate where you’ve been and think about where you’re going. It’s about starting fresh, right in the middle of the mess of our lives. It’s about saying, this too can be new (again). Starting Wedding Planning (Again) […]

While every January we reapproach the idea of beginnings (beginning the New Year, beginning wedding planning), Januaries aren’t really about true, from scratch beginnings. What I find inspiring about New Year’s (my most favorite of holidays) is that it’s all about starting again, right where you are. It’s about allowing yourself a clearing, a pause, a sense of space, so you can evaluate where you’ve been and think about where you’re going. It’s about starting fresh, right in the middle of the mess of our lives. It’s about saying, this too can be new (again).

Starting Wedding Planning (Again)

Each year, many of you descend on APW in the New Year to start wedding planning. But those visits are the January kind of beginnings. Maybe you just got engaged over the holidays (but have been scrabbling around in your mind, thinking about weddings as a pre-engaged person for months). Maybe you’ve been engaged for months (or years), but have suddenly realized that your wedding is, indeed, happening in 2015, and you’d better figure out how to actually… do this thing. And for the few of you genuinely starting from scratch, well, I’m glad you’re able to do that here. We aim to make APW the kind of community where nobody will judge you for having a potluck wedding, or an I-need-all-the-help-I-can-get DIY wedding, or hell, an $80,000 wedding. We aim to be a place where you can talk and think about marriage (which in theory is the point of the whole damn thing). And we also hope to gently debate each other when we disagree, but do so kindly (sometimes with just a simple agreement to disagree forever).

More then anything, over the past six and a half years, we’ve aimed to be a place that will help you actually plan your wedding. Because aside from the wedding industry having a dubious set of guiding principals (buy more things?), for an industry with so much money and clout behind it, it’s awfully bad at helping you figure out how to actually throw a damn wedding. For those of us who can’t pay for the best of everything (or just hire the best wedding planners to buy the best of everything on our credit cards), the wedding industry doesn’t seem to offer much. We’re tossed scraps of inspiration pictures. (“Okay! It says they did this on a budget in Brooklyn. So maybe if I stare at the pictures long enough, I can figure out what the budget was, and how they did it.”) And we’re also given dribs of almost condescendingly bad information. (“This book says if I use flowers that are less expensive, my florist bill will be lower???”) So we’ve been hard at work over the last few years creating real, helpful logistical information for planning the whole shebang. In the next few days, we’ll be publishing our top 50 guide to the best resources on APW for getting started wedding planning, but in the interim, may I gently nudge you to our How To and Logistics sections? Along with our How We Did It wedding posts that talk numbers and, well, how people did it.

Beginning… A new Wedding Planning Book!

This year, I’m in the middle of my own re-beginning. Four years ago I started writing a wedding planning book, outlining a more sane wedding philosophy than any of the (frankly bat-shit crazy) thoughts the mainstream wedding industry was floating around as “how things were done.” Three years ago, that book was published, and Amtrak took me all around the country on a month-long book tour, where I got to meet tons of you, and talk weddings, marriage, feminism, and more. And in the years since, that book has gone on to sell more copies than I ever, ever, ever expected. (Because on some level, I assumed it was just me that needed more help and sanity in wedding planning.)

But in the past year or two, as we’ve worked hard to publish more and more logistical planning information on the site, it’s felt like something was missing. My book is a sassy, emotional little guide to rethinking what weddings can be, and I’m super proud of it. But it still doesn’t provide all the information that I so desperately needed while planning our wedding. (What would it logistically mean to do a wedding at my parents’ house?) Nor does it answer the questions that my newly engaged friends pepper me with. (What do I need to know about rentals? How do you get married on a public beach?) And just like last time, some part of me started to realize that publishing this information willy nilly online wasn’t… enough. That wedding planning deserved organized chapters, and margins you could write in, and space where you could take notes. Just like the emotions and philosophy of wedding planning needed a book you could pass to your partner, and mom, and best friend, the logistics of wedding planning needed the very same thing.

All of which is to say, I’m writing a book, again. I came up with the idea last spring, and was in the midst of selling it when my publisher almost merged with Hachette as part of the Amazon / Hachette war, with authors in the cross fire. After months of delay, the whole Hachette deal fell through, and just like that, contracts were signed and I was writing a book. I struggled through writing all fall, not wanting to tell much of anyone till the book was closer to publication… and I had proved to myself that I could write this sort of book. Because unlike the last go-round, where I more or less sat down and downloaded my thoughts onto paper, this time I needed to hire a research assistant, and we needed to conduct a ton of interviews, and I needed to boil that information (along with the best information lurking in the corners of APW) down into something really helpful. And I wanted a few months to prove to myself that it could be done (by, um, me). In the last few months I’ve proved that to myself. I now just need to keep on proving it every day for a few more months.

Not One of Those Awful Blank Three Ring Binder Things

I’m happy to announce that A Practical Wedding’s Guidebook for Creating the Wedding You Want (with the Budget You’ve Got) (Or something. My editor and I have no honest-to-God idea exactly what we’re calling the book yet. But she’s awesome, and my publishing team has already proven they are awesome once before, so it’ll be something nice.) will be out this December 2015, for stuffing Christmas stockings and putting under Hanukkah menorahs. Unlike the last book, it’s going to be a little bigger (though still softcover and affordable), with more space to scribble on it, and tons of information-dense pages. Bullet pointed lists are my new best friends.

So, in that spirit, here is another bullet pointed list to add to my ever-growing collection on my hard drive.

What can you expect in this book?

“So I’m having a taco truck wedding. I just need to hire a taco truck and have them show up and that’s it right? Wait, that’s NOT it? Well shit.” (And how about a list of all the other stuff you need to think about?)

“How on earth do I navigate the wedding dress process without losing my mind goddamn mind? Also, is all of this a scam?” (Interestingly, no. It’s just very poorly explained, often by very condescending salespeople.)

“The Internet seems to think that my venue is a perfectly curated hipster design space. But it’s not. In fact, it’s more like a big ugly space. How can I make it cute without breaking the bank?” (How about I interview some awesome designers and round up the best tips for you?)

“I think I’m going to have to rent tables… and… other things? I don’t have someone else doing it for me! What do I need to know?” (You do need to know things, but it’s not rocket science so I’m just going to collect it all in once place for you, mmmkay?)

And more!

Way more!

When I was at the end of writing the last book, I dashed this off in a post (which has since become my favorite line on all of my creative projects ever):

After I finished the first half, people would ask what I thought about the book, and I’d look into the middle distance and wave my arm around and say, “It’s not shitty.” And then I’d pause and say, “I really don’t have any perspective.”

I’m about halfway through with my draft pages on this book, and I can offer about the same review this time. Hopefully later I’ll get to this point:

Because what I really wanted to do was write a damn helpful book. A helpful, empowering book, that doesn’t make you crazy. And I’m pretty sure I did that. Plus, there are red shoes on the cover, so it’s kind of a win either way.

But for now, I wish you all in your (re-)beginnings, what I wish on my own. I wish that they are not shitty. And maybe later, that you get red shoes.

Till then, here is to wading through it together.

xoxo

Meg

Coming up in the next few weeks and months on APW: Bunches of tips to get you started (or re-started) wedding planning. Some of the most smoking hot, outside the box weddings we’ve ever even seen, plus information on how they were pulled off. A near endless line up of DIY tutorials on crafts and flowers by all of our favorite designers. Tons of logistical help, some of which is sourced from my outtakes from the book. (I can’t fit in thousands of words of research about vintage wedding dresses, but I’m pretty sure you want to know about it.) Essays on life and marriage from some of our new regular contributors, our killer new team of writing interns… and you. Plus tips on simplifying cooking, insurance, fitness (to keep you alive), and all of those tiny steps we’re all taking toward full adulthood. Hell yes, 2015. Let’s do this.

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2015/01/new-apw-book/feed/78You Could Buy A Car With That Weddinghttp://apracticalwedding.com/2014/04/wedding-costs/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2014/04/wedding-costs/#commentsTue, 29 Apr 2014 11:30:22 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=123139139I was late to the car buying game. With a near decade in New York followed by a gift of an impractical low-value car, I didn’t buy a car till I was in my thirties (and pregnant). I followed up that act this year, with the purchase of a car big enough to haul nine-foot seamless backdrops, small sets, and passels of children who need to go to soccer games (or whatever). It was my Hail Mary attempt to not have to buy a car for another decade. It’s also how I ended up realizing I had more than the […]

I was late to the car buying game. With a near decade in New York followed by a gift of an impractical low-value car, I didn’t buy a car till I was in my thirties (and pregnant). I followed up that act this year, with the purchase of a car big enough to haul nine-foot seamless backdrops, small sets, and passels of children who need to go to soccer games (or whatever). It was my Hail Mary attempt to not have to buy a car for another decade. It’s also how I ended up realizing I had more than the value of my wedding sitting in the driveway on wheels. In fact, because I waited so long to buy those cars, I’d spent more than the value of my wedding in CASH on those vehicles combined.

Huh.

When you’re planning a wedding, you tend to get a lot of guilting comments about what people spend on weddings these days—as if you, the bride/groom to be, is particularly enthused about what weddings cost. The two things I heard most often during my wedding planning were, “You could buy a car with what a wedding costs these days.” And, “Some people would rather have a down payment than a big wedding.” I, apparently, was not part of the wise and frugal “some people.”

The down payment comment was always easy enough for me to dismiss. Firstly, our wedding was partially paid for by contributions from parents—contributions they were making toward our wedding, not toward whatever we felt like spending it on. And secondly, the amount we were spending on our wedding would have been a down payment on exactly nothing in the expensive Bay Area.

But. The car logic. You actually could have bought a pretty decent car for what we spent on our wedding. And cars are practical, right? And weddings are… not, right?

Except. This week, I woke up to a wedding worth of cars in my driveway. And it turns out, a driveway full of cars feels nothing like our wedding.

Let’s say you are spending an amount on your wedding that could result in a car (or even a down payment). Do you feel guilty? Do you make comparisons? Do you ponder the vast number of things you could be doing with this money that seem more legitimate and more responsible than throwing this party to celebrate your union? If you’re a woman living in the Western world, the answer is of course you are. Because you’re trapped. On one hand, there is the significant cost of even a scaled-back modern wedding, and trying to somehow manage everyone’s expectations. And on the other hand, there is the endless guilt, in the form of articles, eyebrow raises, and elevator-ride lectures, on how insane the cost of weddings are these days.

There are a few events in life that are so singular, they can’t be compared to other things. When I was pregnant, I refused to make a solid birth plan because, I kept pointing out, I didn’t know what labor was LIKE. Labor can’t be compared to other things. It’s not “a little like that time you kept a library book out for a year and got yelled at” or even “kind of like terrible period cramps but with a baby.” Labor exists on another plane of reality.

It turns out, weddings do too. At the time, I wished our wedding had cost less. But I don’t regret it because it ended up creating our singular emotional experience. It wasn’t the only wedding we could have had (in some other universe, we had a cake and punch on the church synagogue lawn kind of wedding). But given a confluence of circumstances, it was the wedding we got. It was our one particular, shockingly hot day in the Bay Area in August, under a huppah. It was the day we made huge promises, and I dropped David’s ring, and he drank beers on the windowsill with his best friend, and I did the electric slide to Dolly Parton. It was ours. It’s the moment we tied our lives together, legally and religiously. It’s the moment we revisit in our minds, when the going gets tough.

Five years later, no part of me wishes that wedding were instead the two cars in our driveway, practical as they are.

We don’t live on bread alone. Or even cars, as it turns out.

(Though, word to the wise. Obviously, if you need to buy a car, don’t buy a wedding instead. They get terrible gas mileage.)

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2014/04/wedding-costs/feed/9710 Tips For Plus Size Wedding Dress Shoppinghttp://apracticalwedding.com/2014/01/plus-sized-wedding-dress-shopping/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2014/01/plus-sized-wedding-dress-shopping/#commentsThu, 23 Jan 2014 17:30:42 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=123132679Last year, the APW staff went to meet with the awesome ladies of The Wedding Party, an independent wedding dress store in Berkeley, and picked their brains about wedding dress shopping. We’d asked you to share your fears and concerns, and they had answers to your questions. I walked out of that interview with my perspective totally changed on wedding dress shopping in the most fundamental ways. What stuck with me most was their smart, practical, and empowering thoughts on plus size wedding dress shopping. So today, we’re bringing you the boiled down and focused tips and tricks. But the […]

Last year, the APW staff went to meet with the awesome ladies of The Wedding Party, an independent wedding dress store in Berkeley, and picked their brains about wedding dress shopping. We’d asked you to share your fears and concerns, and they had answers to your questions. I walked out of that interview with my perspective totally changed on wedding dress shopping in the most fundamental ways. What stuck with me most was their smart, practical, and empowering thoughts on plus size wedding dress shopping. So today, we’re bringing you the boiled down and focused tips and tricks. But the information doesn’t end with us. This one is open to all of you. If you’ve bought a wedding dress and struggled with not being the sample size, what did you learn? What’s your best advice?

Here is ours:

Call ahead. Pick up that phone and call stores. Tell them your size (no shame, no apologies) and ask them if they’ll be able to work with you. The economics of wedding dress stores mean that they normally can only afford to carry one sample gown, and they aim for an average size (if their customers run the gamut between a size 2 and a 22, they’ll probably carry a 10). So they may not have sample sizes that will fit, and that’s normal for all ladies. What you’re looking for is someone who’s informed, confident, and excited to be working with you. If you don’t get that, keep on calling.

Big box stores are your friend. Chain wedding dress stores get a bad rap, which they don’t always deserve. But (bless them) their business model is based on having All The Dresses in the store. They’re great for normalizing your shopping experience: behold, dresses that actually fit! Whee! Whether or not you buy a dress, these stores are a great place to start seeing what looks good on you.

The sales person is your resource. When you go into a store, part of what you’re paying for is your salesperson’s expertise. Find someone who’s excited to work with you (and hello, excited to get your commission) and put them to work. Ask questions, ask for recommendations, ask for opinions. You know your body; they know wedding dresses. Put that together to find something great.

It’s your show. The sales person does not get to control your shopping experience. Period.

Don’t worry about the size. Wedding dress sizes are wacky. More affordable brands will often use street sizes, pricier brands will often us “couture” sizes (code for teeny tiny, built for elves). In short, just ignore the number on the sizing tag. Does it fit? GREAT. Next order of business.

You can alter a dress to have sleeves (etc.). It can be frustrating to shop in a universe where it seems like everything is a strapless ball-gown, if a strapless ball-gown isn’t going to be what flatters your boobs, or arms, or whatever you need flattered. Lots of sleeveless (not strapless) dresses can be altered post-production to add a sleeve. Dresses can be shortened, support can be added. Don’t be afraid to ask if changes can be made, and don’t be afraid to ask how much it will cost (hint: it should be reasonable).

Go custom. If nothing works like you want it to work, well, that’s why God made a needle and thread. When navigating a world of sample sizes that don’t fit and sales people without tact, it can get easy to fall into the trap of, “There is nothing for me. Whatever, this will do.” We call bullshit. You can do better. Getting a custom dress made doesn’t mean breaking the bank, it just means doing some research.

No body shaming allowed. We’ve all heard horror stories of sales ladies who ask you if you’re going to lose weight for your wedding, or who generally body shame you. Let’s reframe: that’s not just “how the wedding industry is.” Those are shitty sales people. If someone tries to shame you, nicely shut that shit down (“No I’m not, and it’s none of your business”). Then feel free to ask for a new salesperson.

Be Your Confident Self. This one is more philosophical, but it might be the most important. The people you encounter while wedding dress shopping? They’re working for you. If they’re doing a shitty job, that’s not on you. Take your dollars elsewhere to find your kick-ass dress. You are going to look beautiful on your wedding day, and your dress is out there waiting for you.

Have Fun. Not just have fun, go into this with the idea that you can have fun buying a wedding dress. You’re buying pretty lace/sparkles/layers of tulle/hot pink/pants/whatever you love and look hot in. And you’re buying for your WEDDING. You deserve to have some fun, lady.

More on silk vs. poly, what alterations should really cost, what kind of dress you can get for various price points, and much more right here.

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2014/01/plus-sized-wedding-dress-shopping/feed/571,000 Brides In Pantshttp://apracticalwedding.com/2013/11/brides-in-pants/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/11/brides-in-pants/#commentsFri, 08 Nov 2013 12:30:53 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=95181A zillion years ago (maybe, 2009) I was talking about my “feminist wedding website” with friends at a bar. If people don’t take my work seriously now (they don’t), back in 2009, most people thought that APW was some sort of vivid hallucinatory fever dream I was having. So. I said the words feminist + wedding together in the same sentence, and one of David’s friends looked me dead in the eye and said, “How feminist can weddings possibly be, when women won’t even wear pants?” Point. I mean, obviously some ladies rock suits at their weddings. But for most […]

A zillion years ago (maybe, 2009) I was talking about my “feminist wedding website” with friends at a bar. If people don’t take my work seriously now (they don’t), back in 2009, most people thought that APW was some sort of vivid hallucinatory fever dream I was having. So. I said the words feminist + wedding together in the same sentence, and one of David’s friends looked me dead in the eye and said, “How feminist can weddings possibly be, when women won’t even wear pants?” Point. I mean, obviously some ladies rock suits at their weddings. But for most of us, pants at our wedding isn’t an option we ever seriously consider. Most of us are going to stick with a dress, even if we’ve never worn a dress a day in our lives. In fact, one of the most common questions on our open thread about wedding dress shopping was, “How do you get comfortable in something that doesn’t feel at all like your style?” (Hint: you usually don’t.) So, anyway, back to the whisky bar. Never slow on my feet, I shot back, “Fine. I’m going to launch 1,000 Brides in Pants, and then we’ll talk.” The fact that most of us don’t consider pants a serious wedding option points to just about everything wrong with the wedding industry today. And I’m not arguing all of us (or hell, most of us) should wear pants to our weddings. As one of the femme-iest feminists out there, I wore as many layers of tulle as I could cram on my body at my wedding, and if I could go back in time, the only thing I’d change is to add more lipstick. But my point is pants should feel like a viable option. Women wearing pants has just a little bit of a history. It was only, you know, one of the earliest feminist fights. And as hard fought as that right was, most of us don’t think anything of it when we pull on our jeans in the morning. Let’s take a quick look: So, after years of wanting to launch 1,000 Brides in Pants, the relaunch of the site (coming atcha on Tuesday) seemed the perfect time to inaugurate the project. The aim is to collect inspiration to prove that you can wear a (hot as hell) pants ensemble, and still feel as bridal as you want to. Plus, we really, truly, want to collect 1,000 photos of women wearing pants to their wedding, and maybe, just maybe, change the conversation. (And yeah, we’re going to find pants outfits for those of us who like ruffles, too.) So here’s what what this means to APW. It starts by collecting brides in pants. If you wore pants to your wedding, or have a friend who wore pants, or just have a hot photo of a pants outfit someone REALLY SHOULD wear, send us a photo one of three ways:

Tell us why you’re wearing pants to your wedding, and once per month we’ll publish a “Bride in Pants” of the month here on the site (along with some feminist history and pants shopping roundups). The rest of the time we’ll be putting your submissions up on our Tumblr page. If you’re thinking of wearing pants to your wedding, that’s also where we’ll be publishing our pants inspiration photos (basically all the hot white pants we can’t fit here). So help us kick off the mission by sending in your photos! (We’ll be digging through the archives in the meantime to see what we’ve already got.) In the meantime, some inspiration for your journey: APW’s Brides in Pants Tumblr. East Side Bride’s (obviously awesome) #PantsWeek. Recent article on wearing pants at your wedding in the New York Times. Also recent, from Vogue Australia, about a couture designer creating bridal pants.

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/11/brides-in-pants/feed/90Open Thread: Style Conundrumshttp://apracticalwedding.com/2013/07/open-thread-style-conundrums/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/07/open-thread-style-conundrums/#commentsTue, 09 Jul 2013 18:30:11 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=77958This morning I prattled on about taking fashion risks for your wedding. And while I might go a little riskier now, I certainly didn’t play it safe for our wedding. And that means that exactly four years ago, I was up to my ears in last minute fashion dilemmas. (Did I mention I only decided on my dress six weeks before the wedding? Yeah. That happened.) There were the shoes that I finally pulled out of my closet to wear (after ESB did some serious shopping on my behalf… I’m still a little mad I didn’t buy these). There was the hair flower […]

This morning I prattled on about taking fashion risks for your wedding. And while I might go a little riskier now, I certainly didn’t play it safe for our wedding. And that means that exactly four years ago, I was up to my ears in last minute fashion dilemmas. (Did I mention I only decided on my dress six weeks before the wedding? Yeah. That happened.) There were the shoes that I finally pulled out of my closet to wear (after ESB did some serious shoppingon my behalf… I’m still a little mad I didn’t buy these). There was the hair flower that I made at the very last second, when I realized my plan to make a veil really should have involved some more… uh… planning (and that a veil didn’t work with the dress anyway). And then there was the jewelry question, and that one I never figured out. What kind of necklace would have looked good with my dress? And why the hell didn’t I buy myself a wedding clutch that I could have for always, anyway?

So this open thread is for your style questions. Are you debating taking a risk but want some outside opinions on if it’s a good choice? Do you need some help shoe shopping? Trying to figure out the jewelry situation? Or hell. Do you just have a day to day sartorial question that you could use some crowd-sourced wisdom on?

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/07/open-thread-style-conundrums/feed/488Your Wedding Is Not Timelesshttp://apracticalwedding.com/2013/07/timeless-weddings/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/07/timeless-weddings/#commentsTue, 09 Jul 2013 11:30:29 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=76263Back when I was planning my wedding, I read lots of blog posts about what people would do if they had to plan their wedding again. They all have faded into a nebulous blob, but the series I remember clearly ran a little bit after I got hitched: ESB’s If I Got Married Now… Unsurprisingly, the posts in this series were excellent, and fabulously stylish. I, however, didn’t get them, at the time. In most of these posts, women who were already hitched said that if they were going to do it all again they’d go with some combination of riskier […]

Back when I was planning my wedding, I read lots of blog posts about what people would do if they had to plan their wedding again. They all have faded into a nebulous blob, but the series I remember clearly ran a little bit after I got hitched: ESB’s If I Got Married Now… Unsurprisingly, the posts in this series were excellent, and fabulously stylish. I, however, didn’t get them, at the time. In most of these posts, women who were already hitched said that if they were going to do it all again they’d go with some combination of riskier and simpler. “I’d wear a short blue dress, and I’d elope.” These kinds of posts never felt helpful to me, because I’d think, “Well sure, it’s easy to say you’d wear a little gold dress and have a tiny ceremony, if you already had the long white dress and big party experience.” Turns out, I was sort of wrong.

First, let me be frank: if we were having another wedding, I’d still wear an awesome white dress and have a big party. Hell, the dress would be more dramatic and the party would be larger. But what I didn’t understand was that all those ladies were saying, “I’d take more risks.” And that’s where they were right (and I was wrong). If I got married now… I’d take more risks, because I know there is no such thing as a timeless wedding, so I’d stop playing it safe.

Did you catch that? There is no such thing as a timeless wedding.

This August will be our fourth wedding anniversary. Four years doesn’t seem that long to me (possibly since this year will also be our ninth anniversary of being a couple), but it’s long enough. Four years ago, when I was making my wedding style choices, I dialed everything down a few notches. I wanted our wedding photos to look classy for years after the fact. I wanted to look bridal and beautiful. I didn’t want to look back and think, “Oh my god, what was I thinking?” And I made good choices. My best choices were my risker ones (last minute vintage dress!) but all of them were solid. But if I had to do it over, I’d dial it up. Four years later, our wedding photos already look dated. Four years later I realize there is no such thing as timeless. There is just owning your particular moment in time, or trying to gloss over it.

We got married in 2009, and that date is etched all over our photos. I have the tea length dress, the big hair flower, the mismatched bridesmaid dresses, the vintage filter on our photos. There are the Polaroids, taken on some of the last Polaroid film (hurrah for embracing the moment with those Polaroids). There is no way to look at those wedding photos and think, “This wedding could have taken place yesterday.” No. That wedding took place in 2009. And thank God, because of that, we have four happy years of marriage under our belt.

Last week, I was looking back at a W Magazine retrospective on weddings. There was the early 70s boho wedding dress. The late 70s skirt and suit jacket at the courthouse. (I’m skipping the 80s, because it was grim in the wedding department.) The mid 90s simple sheath. The 00s strapless ball-gowns. They were all beautiful, but none of them were timeless. The best ones were brave in their of-the-time-ness.

If I had to do it all over again, I’d marry the same partner, please and thank you. I’d spend the money to rent part of San Francisco’s city hall for the ceremony. I’d have a backyard reception at our house, where we only spent on food and didn’t bother much with the details. (I know. How zeitgeist-y. But that’s the idea.)

I’d rock an enormous bun, an edgy skirt (probably still tea length, I know what looks good on my figure) and some feathers. I’d stop worrying about finding a timeless engagement ring, and buy an artisan ring I love already. (I don’t wear that timeless engagement ring much anymore anyway, and I’ll sure as shit ask for a new ring for our fifth/tenth anniversary next year.) I’d stick with high-as-hell shiny heels (because I still wear my wedding shoes all the time). I’d have a cat eye, and red lips. And I’d have a huge, bright bouquet. It’s all so 2013, and that’s the whole point.

There is no way to escape time. There is no endgame around mortality. We’re living in this particular moment, and no matter what we do, time will keep marching on, dating all of us. So forget about timeless. That simple white strapless dress is going to tie you to the moment just as much as a risker choice. Wear the simple strapless dress if you love the simple strapless dress. But if you were pondering, maybe, what it would be like to go all spangles (yup, that’s the dress Maddie would wear if she were doing it again), fuck it. Go for it.

The further you are from your wedding day, the prouder you’ll be of your long and happy marriage. I didn’t get married in 2013. I got married in 2009, and I want you to know that. So embrace the zeitgeist. Give yourself permission to go big or go home.

Though I just remembered. I wore hot pink ruffly boy short underwear on my wedding day. That, I’d do again in a heartbeat.

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/07/timeless-weddings/feed/108A Private Weddinghttp://apracticalwedding.com/2013/05/unplugged-wedding-advice/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/05/unplugged-wedding-advice/#commentsWed, 22 May 2013 11:30:01 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=71171A Wedding Invitation Is Not A Media Pass I knew something was changing when a few years ago, I got this question: A reader’s uncle had videotaped her vows on his iPhone, and the day after the wedding had uploaded them to his Facebook page and tagged her in the post. His message was that her vows were so lovely that he felt compelled to share them. Her message was that she felt like her privacy had been violated. She wondered if it would be tremendously rude to ask him to take the video down. “Of course it’s not rude,” […]

I knew something was changing when a few years ago, I got this question: A reader’s uncle had videotaped her vows on his iPhone, and the day after the wedding had uploaded them to his Facebook page and tagged her in the post. His message was that her vows were so lovely that he felt compelled to share them. Her message was that she felt like her privacy had been violated. She wondered if it would be tremendously rude to ask him to take the video down. “Of course it’s not rude,” I replied. “What was rude was to record one of the most personal moments of someone’s life, and to share it as if it belonged to you.”

Fast forward to 2013, and that exchange already feels dated. Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the amount that we share online and through social media will double every year. I don’t think that’s exactly true, since already we’re all shutting down feeds we can’t keep up with (for me, that’s Facebook—sorry Mark). But it’s true that the way people share has changed drastically in the last few years. It’s not just the ubiquity of social networking sites, it’s the way smart phones have put effortless power in our hands. If we can easily take a video, or snap a picture, we can just as thoughtlessly share those photos or videos. We’ve forgotten the person who records the moment (and makes it pretty) is not the person the moment belongs to. We’ve forgotten that privacy has value.

You Don’t Need A Reason

The other week, I was reading an advice column about a woman who didn’t want her children’s pictures shared on social media. Since I’m in a substantially similar position (I share my kid’s pictures in very limited and reasonably private ways), I related. But the advice columnist’s response threw me. They told the woman to tell people, “I know I’m paranoid, but I’d rather you didn’t share my kids picture online.” And thanks for playing, but no. I don’t ask people to not share pictures of my kid because I’m afraid of predators; I just think that he should get to choose how he lives on the internet. I don’t want to make that choice for him, and I definitely don’t want some random person making the call. I disagree with the advice columnist because I don’t think asking people not to share your private life online requires an excuse. I just think it requires a please and thank you.

If you’re asking people to not share your wedding pictures on social media, you might feel like you need a reason, or feel compelled to make an excuse. You might think, “I’m not comfortable having my pictures shared, but it’s not like I’m famous, so what right do I have to ask for that?” But the reason is simply that weddings are private. You invited your uncle, not your uncle and all of his Facebook friends. You’re collecting a community of people to witness a very personal commitment. By doing that, you have the right to request and expect privacy. Figuring out how to do that well is the key.

How Do You Want Your Wedding Shared?

As with all things wedding, this is a conversation best had with your partner first, and then clearly articulated to vendors as well as friends and family. Let’s walk through questions to ask yourself and others.

How are you comfortable having your wedding photos shared online? Do you not care at all? Are you fine with photos being shared in a very public way (say, a wedding blog), but want to control how they are shared where your friends and loved ones will see them (say, Facebook)? Are you fine with having your photos shared, as long as you get to pre-approve where it happens? (i.e., maybe APW is fine with you, but Bride’s Magazine is not. Or hell, vice versa!) Are you fine with having some photos shared, but not others? (We opted to not share photos of our ceremony, because that felt hyper-personal.)

Once you have an idea of what you’re comfortable with, ask your vendors how they like to share photos online, and why they like to do it that way. (If you’ve hired good vendors, chances are they’ll have thoughtful answers.)

If you decide that you’re not comfortable having all your photos shared online, but really want to help your vendors out with publicity, discuss options like sharing photos that don’t include guests, or other personal details. Alternatively, consider letting them share shots that don’t include personally identifying details (i.e., distance shots of the two of you, detail shots, etc.). Keep in mind: if your photos are shared on blogs, they’re going to end up on Pinterest. It’s the current reality of the internet.

If you come to a specific agreement, consider including it in your contract with vendors, to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Next, think about how you want guests to share photos and videos. Having photos of your wedding shared on Facebook, Instagram, or other personal networks means that your ex, or a friend you didn’t invite, or a family member you are estranged from, might see them. That is a different animal than having your wedding published on a blog or in a magazine. (I’m kind of assuming your ex and your crazy Aunt Mindy aren’t avid wedding blog readers, but what do I know?) Because of that, it’s okay to have a different standard for personal sharing.

If you decide you want to encourage sharing (this can be a great way to get wedding pictures from a personal perspective), consider coming up with an Instagram hashtag, and leaving a note on the tables (or in the programs, if that’s how you roll) letting people know what it is. Tell people that you’re excited to see their pictures, and let them go to town. (Our post on crowdsourcing your wedding photos on Instagram has even better ideas).

If you want to limit sharing on social networks, or want to personally choose how much you share, consider putting a sign up where people can see it when they walk in. The sign can ask that people refrain from all sharing, or just from a particular kind of sharing. It might seem weird right now, but with social sharing on the rise, expect this to become more common. At our baby shower, friends put a note on the door that said, “This might surprise you, but Meg and David are actually fairly private people. Out of respect for them, please don’t share photos of this event on Instagram.” Problem solved, and no one minded. In fact, this turned out to be far more graceful than parties where we didn’t put up a note, and friends realized they’d shared things that we would have preferred they didn’t share, but were not fussed enough to ask them to remove.

If you’re asking people to refrain from sharing photos or video of your event, go the extra step. Talk to key players in your wedding about why you’re doing this, and ask them to put the word out. If your mothers, aunts, and best friends all have the message, they’ll make sure word is spread, and you won’t have to feel bossy.

Realize that whatever you do, the system will be imperfect. People may well share things you didn’t want shared, just out of habit. Asking people politely to take things down is not rude in the slightest, and deciding you don’t care enough to ask is fine too.

And finally, as a guest at a wedding (or any other private event), inquire before you post. The two questions I ask most regularly are “Is it okay to share pictures?” and “Is there something you’d like me to use as a hashtag?” Often the response will be very specific, “Sharing is fine, please don’t geo-tag.” Or, “Make sure you don’t share photos of kids, otherwise we’re golden!” or “I’m keeping this one offline.” Occasionally the answer is “What’s Instagram?” but that’s when I’ve asked the wrong demographic (and our teenage cousins are just going to SnapChat our parties, let’s not fool ourselves).

The Moment

Of course, there is a hidden upside to limiting people’s social sharing of your wedding: it forces people to be in the moment. As I talked about in my “Don’t Pin It—Do It” post, we’ve all become so used to sharing what we’re doing online, that we sometimes don’t know how to turn it off. Sometimes the reminder to put away your phone, to put down your camera, comes as a relief. I don’t have to document this one, I can just experience it. Thanks for that.

**Note: For a different (but equally important) take on technology and weddings, check out Offbeat Bride’s classing The Unplugged Wedding.**

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/05/unplugged-wedding-advice/feed/220Letter From The Editor: Traditionhttp://apracticalwedding.com/2013/05/letter-from-the-editor-tradition/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/05/letter-from-the-editor-tradition/#commentsWed, 01 May 2013 11:30:20 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=69551Dear APW, It’s been an interesting experiment, exploring monthly themed content on APW. When we’re in the weeds of editing, the theme doesn’t often seem that apparent. If something is good content, like Elisabeth’s post What If It’s Not Forever?, we run it, theme be damned. But looking back at a month, you can see the arc of the conversation in the way we couldn’t as day-to-day editors. Last month, Rachel led the conversation by talking about how women are attacked online whenever the seem to have it too good, and how excusing that behavior is just another way of objectifying women and keeping them in their place (this […]

This month we’re tackling tradition, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I have no idea where the conversation is going to take us. To be frank, figuring what I was going to write for this month was a little tricky. All of my best stuff on weddings and tradition is in my book, and those are hands down the bits I’m most proud of. (Chapter Three, for those of you following along at home. I mean, it has a both a brief history of American weddings, and a section called “What Is Etiquette Anyway, and Is It Stuffy?”) Those of you who’ve read the book (or APW for a long time) will know that I’m something of a progressive traditionalist. I think that traditions give our lives meaning and power but are ours to claim and shape. My favorite quote in the book on the subject is from Wedding Graduate and theologian Clare Adama, who says, “The Latin origin of tradition, traditio, means not only to hand on but to hand over, and the meanings of practices such as those within weddings are not rigid, but given on to us to value and interpret in our own contexts.” Or as I say in the same section, “We do ourselves a great disservice when we allow tradition to encompass only the things we are sold, instead of the things that have meaning in our hearts.” In short: you can make it yours, while still making it meaningful (for you, and for your granny).

At a party this weekend, a longtime APW sponsor photographer (and friend), pulled out his phone to read me a direct quote from his clients, which he’d written down for my appreciation. Their Rabbi said, “It’s not your day. Just do what everyone else wants.” David immediately started laughing so hard he looked like he was going to choke. That guy loves him some bluntness (and some Rabbis). This is the dead opposite of what the wedding industry will tell you, but in some nuanced ways, it’s kind of right (and so relaxing). If you have a good relationship with your parents, and they’ve spent the last thirty years thinking about you every single day…maybe just let your mom use that goddamn florist she wants to use. Etiquette and tradition can rather handily act as a speed bump on the way to self-absorbed wedding hell. Because yes, it’s your wedding, but it’s everyone who loves you’s day (elopements excluded!), and sometimes you just have to pick your battles. Or as I like to think about it: Etiquette. That thing that lets me just follow the rules now and then, not worry about it, and then take a nap (while my mom is calling her beloved florist).

As we turned our lens of tradition to Reclaiming Wife content for this month, I was surprised to realize that the same rules apply there as apply to weddings. This month we’re hosting a multi-part discussion on stay-at-home parenting, work-from-home parenting, and the glories of daycare. As I looked at these essays, I realized that just like with weddings, what’s sold as traditional in motherhood is often anything but. And in exactly the same way, that willful misconstruing of history to fit the cultural narrative causes no end of problems (not to mention bad decisions made out of guilt).

Suffice to say, I’m pretty excited about May. Who knows where the discussion will lead us, but since we’re starting with one of my favorite ideas, I’m pretty sure it’s going to take us somewhere good.

]]>http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/05/letter-from-the-editor-tradition/feed/67Open Thread: What You Want From How We Did Ithttp://apracticalwedding.com/2013/03/how-we-did-it-what-you-want/
http://apracticalwedding.com/2013/03/how-we-did-it-what-you-want/#commentsTue, 19 Mar 2013 16:30:26 +0000http://apracticalwedding.com/?p=65222Since my early days of reading wedding blogs (which were, in fact, the very early days of wedding blogs), I’ve spent a lot of time wondering: but… how did you do it? And I don’t mean this in an, “Oh, I see that you have listed links to your vendors, which totally does not help me since none of those vendors list prices and/or explanations of services on their websites,” but in a nitty-gritty, logistical, “How did you really put it all together?” kind of way. This question hits me the hardest when I’m looking at non-traditional weddings. Like, okay. The […]

Since my early days of reading wedding blogs (which were, in fact, the very early days of wedding blogs), I’ve spent a lot of time wondering: but… how did you do it? And I don’t mean this in an, “Oh, I see that you have listed links to your vendors, which totally does not help me since none of those vendors list prices and/or explanations of services on their websites,” but in a nitty-gritty, logistical, “How did you really put it all together?” kind of way. This question hits me the hardest when I’m looking at non-traditional weddings. Like, okay. The amazing wedding from which the photo above comes. I know they: rented SF city hall on the weekend, had a food truck reception at an art gallery, had a custom wedding dress made. But… how? How did they go about finding the art gallery? How did they go about find the person who made the dress? What did it cost, and were there other major trade offs or decisions they could have made to make it a significantly different cost? What was worth it? What really wasn’t?

I know I’m not the only person with these questions, because every time one of my friends gets engaged, they end up asking me questions like, “But. How do you even go about throwing a beach wedding?” or “What steps do you have to go through to make a city hall wedding happen?” And the problem is I don’t even have a place I can point them for resources. Ninety-nine percent of blogs out there are focused on giving you a glut of pretty pictures, with no real way to replicate them except hire the (expensive?) staff that worked on said weddings. And ninety-nine percent of wedding websites just want to sell you crap/make you crazy (hey The Kn*t’s to-do lists). Since APW has historically been focused on the emotions of the thing, aka getting you through wedding planning in one sane piece… I don’t have anywhere to point people. I mean, the book. You should really read the book. But that’s still not going to tell you how to find an art gallery in your city that you can afford to rent.

So, last week we introduced a new series: How We Did It. The idea is that, like Wedding Graduates and Wordless Weddings, it’s a way of sharing your wedding with APWers. Maybe you don’t want to talk about what you learned emotionally (Wedding Graduates), or show us lots of pretty pictures (Wordless Weddings), but instead you just want to tell us how you put it all together. Well guess what? You’re in luck, because we totally want to hear about that.

As we develop this series, we want to know what questions you want us to ask. This is our starting list, but let’s break it down. When you look at a wedding, what do you want to know?

Favorite Things About the WeddingPlanned BudgetActual BudgetNumber of GuestsWhere we allocated the most fundsWhere we allocated the least fundsWhat was totally worth it What was totally not A few things that helped us along the wayMy best practical advice to my planning-self

** Caveat: As APW begins to delve into wedding budgets, I want to be very clear that our rule here is No Budget Shaming. I have volumes to say about this practice (but that’s another post), but suffice to say, APW is not a place where, “Seriously? You call that budget practical?” is any more tolerated than, “Ugh, I can’t believe you spent so little, how cheap.” Reader budgets go from…what’s the cost of a marriage license? That much. All the way up to $60K or $80K or more. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re spending $1 or $1,000,000, you’re just as much a part of the community as anyone else, and deserve just as much respect. **